news

Tuesday's news in under 2 minutes.

Tony Abbott

 

 

1. The Coalition has revealed the details of its offshore asylum seeker processing plan. The plan includes what is already being dubbed as a ‘tent city’ on the island of Nauru. According to The Australian newspaper, the Coalition is proposing erecting tents to house at least 2000 asylum seekers “while finding locations for thousands more”. Scott Morrison, the Opposition’s Immigration spokesperson, said that the Abbott Government would work towards creating space for 5000 asylum seekers on Nauru.

“There would be no guarantee or resettlement in Australia,” Mr Morrison told the media. “People would be invited to make application for resettlement elsewhere. While they are doing that they would have accommodation, it would be like a bridging visa program in Nauru.”

2. In a news conference, Pope Francis has spoken out about gay priests, saying that it is not his place to judge them based on their sexual orientation. “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” he said, adding: “The problem is not having this orientation, it is lobbying. That’s the most serious problem.” He also said that gays and lesbians should be “treated with respect, compassion and sensitivity, without discrimination”. It’s a big step-up from the previous pope, Benedict, who in 2008 suggested that homosexuality was akin to climate change in that it was a threat to the survival of the human race.

3. Swimmer Christian Sprenger has won Australia’s first gold medal at the world championships in Barcelona. Twenty-seven-year-old Sprenger won the 100m breaststroke final overnight.

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4. A music director from the US has been jailed for up to 50 years after  he was convicted of repeatedly raping his daughters and fathering six children by them. Fifty-five-year-old Aswad Ayinde is known for directing the 1996 Fugees film clip Killing Me Softly. It’s been reported that he raped one daughter from when she was only eight-years-old.

5. Melbourne has been named as the Australian city to host the 2015 Cricket World Cup final. The semi finals of the event will be held in Sydney and New Zealand. More than one billion people are expected to tune in for the televised broadcast of the final, which will be held at the iconic Melbourne Cricket Ground.

6. A 17-year-old Australian boy has taken out the Rubik’s Cube World Championship. At least 575 people competed in the championships, but it was Feliks Zemdegs who won, with an average time of solving the 3 x 3 cube at 8.18 seconds.  Aussie, Aussie, Aussie.

7. When US police forces raided a marijuana growing operation in California this week, they were not only there with the intention of finding cannabis plants. Instead, they rescued a teenage girl from Los Angeles, who had been reportedly held captive by the men running the operation. The girl was reported missing in April, and was allegedly sexually assaulted by the two men – Ryan Alan Balletto, 30, and Patrick Steven Pearmain, 25 – and sometimes held captive in a metal box, which measured only 4 x 2 x 2 feet.

Audrie Potts

8. A girl in the US committed suicide last year after her classmates allegedly sexually assaulted her and took pictures of the incident and posted them online. Three boys were arrested for sexual battery and distribution and possession of child pornography, after the incident involving 15-year-old Audrie Pott. The boys are currently under house arrest as they await their trial. Pott’s parents have recently added another name to their lawsuit, alleging one of Audrie’s female classmates was present at the time of the assault, and that she encouraged the boys to assault Audrie, draw on her body, and document their crimes.

9. Two men have been killed in separate shootings in the suburbs of Sydney overnight. One man has been named as 19-year-old Bassil Hijazi. He was shot five times in the suburb of Bexley. The other man was 35 and was shot just a few suburbs away in Earlwood.

10. Caroline Criado-Perez has gained attention after campaigning to the Bank of England to put Jane Austen’s face on Britain’s new £10 banknote – but unfortunately that attention is not all positive. After the Bank’s decision to honour Ms Austen was announced, Ms Criado-Perez began receiving anonymous abuse and rape threats via Twitter.

Criado-Perez spoke about the incident to ABC Radio on Monday, and commented on Twitter’s policy for reporting tweets as abusive, saying, “If you’re someone who’s receiving . . . about 50 rape threats an hour, it’s just not practical to expect you to go and fill in this form every single tweet. They’re on the side of the abusers, not the victims, and they really, really need to get on the side of the victims.” Twitter has since been criticised for failing to respond to the rape threats Ms Criado-Perez faced.